I just read on pitchfork that the white stripes are putting out a christmas album with a cover of Walking with a ghost, weird?

“The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts” – Friedrich Nietzsche

So i don't like the song initially but the white stripes version is definitely more tolerable....is jack white a lesbian?

“The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts” – Friedrich Nietzsche

To fans of Tegan & Sara, it may seem like it's been a quick rise from unknown indie band to one with a respectable following. But to Tegan & Sara it has been a long, hard road with many artistic rewards along the way. One of their most recent rewards is that they are finally putting out a DVD. It's Not Fun, Don't Do It!, features all of their music videos, a full length concert, the making of their video for "So Jealous," and endless commentary by these talkative sisters/singers.

Daniel Robert Epstein: Are both of you still on vacation?

Sara Quin: Yes, we are although Tegan is gone. She was here in Montréal for two weeks, so she just left to go back to Vancouver. I’m without her again, which is nice. But we had a really nice time. That was the first time in six years that we’d had time off together without it being somewhat related to Christmas or a death or the road or business.

DRE:Wow.

Sara:Yeah, it was fun. We went to the BioDome and went to Gay Pride in Toronto and went to movies. It was nice.

DRE:What movies did you see?

Sara:We saw Superman [Returns], which was great and we saw The Devil Wears Prada, which was really funny. We went with a couple of friends and we all chuckled and had a good time. We got out and started to socially analyze the roles. I was like, “Okay. Wait. Wait. Please. Let’s just not do that with this movie. There’s no point. We laughed. It was funny. It was totally not a waste of an hour and a half. Let’s just let it be what it is.” But I really thought Meryl Streep was great.

DRE:Were you surprised that Tegan wanted to do so much touristy stuff?

Sara:Yeah, but when we were kids we didn’t do a lot of vacation stuff. Our mom was a single parent and during the summer, going on vacation was going the six blocks to my grandma’s house to hang out and watch soap operas. I think our big trip was when we went to Florida to visit family and go to Disneyworld when I was 11 or 12. I don’t even think we understood what it was to be a tourist because just going anywhere outside of where we lived was touristy. So suddenly being in a band and traveling all the time, everyone around you is like, “Oh my God. You’re so lucky. You get to go everywhere and see everything.” I’m like, “Yeah. I’ve seen every club and every theater in every city around the world.” But you don’t really get a chance to go and see the Empire State Building or go see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or whatever a normal person would do if they were in Paris. Everyone was making fun of us that we were going to do touristy stuff in Montreal especially because I’ve been living here for four years. But it was nice to see what the tourists see.

DRE:You get that stuff out of the way and you can always say, “I did it.”

Sara:Exactly. The most embarrassing part is when people come and they’re like, “Oh, have you ever been to the Olympic Stadium or the BioDome or the whatever?” You’re like, “Um. No. I’ve been meaning to do that.” Now I can be like, “Yes. I’ve done it. It’s great.”

DRE:The DVD was supposed to originally come out earlier this year. What happened?

Sara:The actual content of the DVD was very simple to put together. We just had to shoot the concert and edit it and whatever. But we initially we had projected a February/March release because we knew we were going to take time off. We thought that it would be a good time to put the DVD out. But we felt we deserved to have a fair deal especially since most of the content actually belongs to us. It’s interesting once you start negotiating one of those contracts. It’s easy to sign a record deal when you don’t negotiate or change anything, but it’s difficult once you start saying, “Well, can we adjust this? Can we do this and do that?” It’s remarkable how long it can take. It took us a long time. The reason it took so long is because we wanted something that we felt was fair. It takes forever when you start getting lawyers and record company people involved. We’re just in a funny growing pain type time. We love our labels and we just wanted to make sure that we got it right. Once we started finalizing things, we released it was an awkward time to put the DVD out, so we just moved things back until the end of the summer. We’re not Eminem releasing our big DVD. We’re a small, independent band. It’s a big deal for us, but it’s a small deal for the industry. So we figured it didn’t really matter when we released it.

DRE:So when you talk about footage you own that’s on the DVD you mean the footage you and your sister shot personally, not the videos and such.

Sara:No, we pretty much own the videos and we only partially own the video, Walking With a Ghost because our US label paid for it. But all the other videos we pretty much paid for ourselves with the help of the Canadian government. In Canada we have Factor Grants, where you have to come up with an organized plan and then you come up with half the money and the government will match your money. But it has to be exactly what you said it was going to be. People have been known to go off on a tangent and do something different and they will ask for their money back. So really the only thing on the DVD that is the label’s is the actual hour-long concert, which at the time of negotiating we hadn’t been paid back for it. We paid for it ourselves and then they were going to pay us back. Ownership in the music industry is a funny thing. Not very many people own their stuff anymore. I don’t even think labels really understand ownership anymore because they just assume they own everything. I don’t want to give this perception that the DVD was a battleground. It was just a brave new world for Tegan and Sara. We were like, “We own this now. We can do whatever we want.”

DRE:Is there a big difference between labels in Canada and America?

Sara:It’s all the same thing really. I like record labels. I don’t think they’re bad. I just don’t necessarily think they’re always effective. Some of the techniques that bands like us are choosing now seem really revolutionary to labels. One of the videos on our DVD, Living Room, was difficult to get financed. My mom was like, “Don’t you dare come after me for money.” We’re basically like, “We have no money.” But we definitely wanted to make this video so we figured out what it would cost to make the video and what it would cost to make t-shirts and sell t-shirts to make the video. When they were all sold, it gave us enough to pay back making and shipping the t-shirts and with the money that was left over was the exact amount we needed to make the video. When we told our labels what we were doing, they just were astonished by it. Sometimes you have to do things outside of the box and I just don’t think labels are good at that. But they’re not going to change their techniques. I think that when it comes down to it, when the next band comes along and they can’t make a video, they’re not going to be like, “Well you know one time this band they did this.” I don’t even think they have space for that information. They just look at it as like a cute, funny thing that one of their bands did one time. I certainly feel like a bit of trailblazer but I’m not prepared to start my own label and do it all myself.

DRE:Why wouldn’t your mom pay for anything?

Sara:My mom never pays for anything [laughs] I’m just kidding. My mom, my dad and my stepdad raised us to be very independent. My mom bought us a stool so we could do the laundry when we were eight or something. So I always hated the idea of asking them for money. I remember we got into a strange financial situation about a year after high school. There was a lot of drama and crying and like, “Oh my God. What are we going to do?” My parents were all like, “Whatever you need even if it means remortgaging the house.” Very 7th Heaven. But we just carried on and we fixed the situation. My parents would do anything for us, but we always use my mom as the butt of the joke because it sounds funnier.

DRE:You and your sister obviously get along really well. When you do argue what is it over?

Sara:We didn’t have other brothers or sisters so we always were really close and hung out. We fought like normal siblings. So when we started working together, it just carried over. There’s nitpicking. We mostly argue over “Well you said this to me like that.” It’s really random and you can’t really talk yourself out of an argument like that. It’s stupid sometimes. I think most people are surprised that we don’t beat each other up or argue or yell or that we’re not competitive. When Tegan does something to annoy me, I tell her. I’ll be like, “I can’t believe you just did that and I hope you die." Whereas if we’re on the road and my drummer does something I don’t like, inside I’m like, “I hope you die.” Whereas outside I have to be like, “Rob, I need to talk to you about this issue. I prefer if you would do this or that next time.” You don’t say that to a sibling. You’re not like, “Jeez. Can we talk about this constructively?” You’re more reactionary. When it comes to the business, I think that we have a pretty similar idea of what our band and what our future is going to look like. Occasionally we’ll argue about how that should be done or how it should be said to people. Tegan’s always been a bit more hardcore about money and business. I’ve always been a bit more anal about the actual art and presentation of our music and videos and our image. We’ll get a little bit down on each other occasionally when she’s like doing payroll. I’ll be like, “God. Loosen up. Sergeant Sunshine.” She’ll be like, “You don’t have any idea how much work this is. You don’t know how long it took me to do.” Then it’s the opposite when I send her a t-shirt idea. She’s like, “Yeah. Whatever. I don’t care.” I’m like, “Do you have any idea how many hours I spent doing this?” So “You don’t know how hard it is for me” is a very common fight with us.

DRE:Did the two of you always collaborate?

Sara:We always played music. We were a very musical family in terms of listening to music and fooling around with music. We had a piano and we took lessons. I remember starting to write songs in about tenth grade. I remember actually thinking, “Okay. I want to make my own songs.” I loved music and I saw bands play all the time. We discovered that there wasn’t just the first layer of music that you heard on the radio or on TV and that there were all these different layers. I talk about this to my friends that are younger and they laugh hysterically because they say I sound like I’m really old. But I remember being a teenager without the Internet. 1996 was the olden days. Spin and Rolling Stone were a lot better back then but everything was so different. I definitely started writing songs and playing first, but Tegan immediately was like, “Yeah. I’m going to write songs too.” We started singing together and recording ourselves. It was very distracting during high school. All we did was record and play and make demo tapes and try to sell them at school. There was a radio broadcasting class at high school and our broadcasting teacher taught us how to use the recording studio so we could record our demos more professionally. Then it just became this intense infatuation with writing songs and playing for people.

DRE:There’s a lot of commentary on the DVD too.

Sara:Yeah, it’s obnoxious.

DRE:Are you two just nonstop talkers?

Sara:We were supposed to do it on the road and then we just kept putting it off and putting it off. We were like, “Oh, there’s no rush.” Then I decided I was going to fly to Vancouver and take a couple days off. On that vacation I was like, “Let’s just do the commentary.” We decided it would be more fun to do the commentary if you could see us. So we decided to videotape ourselves doing the commentary for the concert so there could be that option. Then once we had done it for it concert, we were like, “Well why don’t we do it for everything?”DRE:It seems like you are a good talker.Sara:Well, when we were doing the commentary, there were some passive aggressive moments where I can tell Tegan’s not talking because she thinks I’m talking too much. She just hasn’t learned yet that that’s actually a technique I use to make sure she shuts up. It’s a funny passive aggressive war that we have sometimes. I don’t know who’s a better speaker. I know that we go through phases live. There was a time when we first started out where I did a lot of the talking and Tegan was quite shy on stage. Then we went through this phase where she talked all the time and I had this quieter persona where I felt shy and didn’t want to talk all the time.

DRE:Is your mom still doing stuff for the website?

Sara:She said that she doesn’t want to write stuff anymore. She told us that we need to stop referencing her so much because it’s creepy so we’re trying not to talk about her as much. We’re trying to talk about other people instead. I asked her to write a piece because she’s on vacation right now but she said no.

DRE:I read an article about the two of you where the male journalist wrote that he was excited to interview the gay identical twin sisters.

Sara:The thing is, I don’t remember that situation. Nobody’s ever been so forward about that with me before. Most of the time people have these completely normal conversations with us and then they write these articles that are extremely slanted and talking about mostly about our sexuality. I find that interesting because so often it’s written from the perspective of these white hetero guys. They don’t ask us anything about being gay and then they write these articles that are about us being gay. It’s like, “What the hell do you know about us being gay? What do you know about our dynamic?” It’s voyeuristic because the articles get titled in a way that gets attention and nothing gets people’s attention like gay twins. But we can’t help it. It’s not a marketing thing that we came up with. We just are. It’s definitely a part of who we are, but it’s not as if we had six arms. It’s not a freakish thing. It should be normal. I’m not just saying it’s guys because girls write bizarre articles too. If they know that their article is going to be written about us being gay, it would be nice for them to actually talk to us about it. I think that’s why those articles feel so homophobic to me. They are written from this perspective where they weren’t comfortable enough to ask me about that stuff to my face or on the phone, but they’re comfortable enough to write it and let thousands of people read it, which is why there’s still so much homophobia in this world. It seems like it is okay to be homophobic and yet it leaves the people who these articles are written about feeling really bad. I feel terrible. I can handle a bad review. After seven years of getting reviews, both good and bad, you get over it. But it’s a whole other level when people are talking about you as a person and it makes you realize how easy it is to be inappropriate and homophobic. We have all guys in our band and it’s incredible sometimes how they’ll say or do something and I’ll be like, “Oh my God. That’s so homophobic and sexist.” But they don’t even know. It is just like how so many people are still extremely racist or say racist things. When you’re not in the minority and you don’t have any education and you don’t care about educating yourself, it’s really easy to just say or do those things and not even mean it. Then when you get called on it, they’re like, “But I didn’t know.” I’m not going to run around calling every person who has ever written an article about us and be like, “Dear Sir or Madam, you’ve been extremely sexist and homophobic and I bet you didn’t even think you were being that way.” What’s the point? If someone’s really, really over the top, I’ll spend the energy doing it. But I don’t have the energy to do it. I just don’t. I just hope it’ll change.

DRE:You’re 25 now, at what age did you know you were gay?

Sara:It’s a funny thing. It’s like when you ask the average person, “When did you know you were straight?” You just know.

DRE:Some people don’t.

Sara:You’re totally right. For me, it felt like a natural thing. You realize puberty’s happening and you get crushes on people. In junior high you’re like “Hmm. I don’t really want to date Bobby. I want to date a girl.” It was as simple as that. Again, I was raised in an extremely heterosexual society so it is not like one day you go, “Oh I guess I’m gay.” You feel weird. You feel scared and you don’t want to talk about it. You know something’s different about you, but you don’t even know that for a fact because you can’t even talk about it with other people. It was a long process, but I definitely knew when I was 12. But I wasn’t able to actually vocalize that or even say it to myself. I wasn’t able to say, “I think I’m gay inside.” I didn’t even say that until I was like 18 or 19 when I was like, “Wow. I really am gay.” Even though like all through junior high and high school, I was like, “Yeah. I definitely don’t like boys.”

DRE:Did you and Tegan talk about it?

Sara:Not really. I think it was just understood. But I think Tegan knew that I was gay long before we’d ever said anything. She didn’t come out until after high school. She didn’t sit me down and say, “Gee. Sara. Guess what.” She just was like, “Yeah, I’m dating this girl and that’s what I’m doing.” I was like, “Okay. Whatever.” I have friends who are my age who are coming out now and I just can’t believe that it’s taken them this long and yet I think about how long it took me and I had a pretty ideal situation. My mom had lots of gay friends and was very open and progressive. I went to a really progressive, arty school and I had really progressive, arty, queer friends. I’m like, “Jeez. I was so scared to talk about it. I can’t even imagine if I grew up in a family where we were first generation immigrants who are extremely religious or whatever.”

DRE:What do you think about SuicideGirls?

Sara:I love SuicideGirls. My mom worked with teen prostitutes for ten years. So we had lots of interesting conversations about pornography and sex and sex workers and all of these things when I was in junior high school. I had very strong opinions about most things associated with sex and sexuality. When I got out of school, I rebelled against my mom’s views. Not that she was wrong but she had a lot of really strong opinions about certain parts of the industry. It was interesting to travel because there are so many positive things that happen in the sex trade and the sex industry. But what’s cool about SuicideGirls is that if you search for porn on the Internet and you’re looking for people who aren’t blonde, long-haired, banger types, it is almost impossible to find. Porn looks the same, no matter where you go, no matter what you look at. SuicideGirls really is alternative to that. I can see why it’s been really popular and why it’s attractive.

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

I really like it so far. Definitely not as good as So Jealous, but I really do like it, though it takes some getting used to. What surprised me most is that Sara's songs are extremely good, for the most part, while Tegan seems a bit lost (especially lyrically), with a few exceptions.

My favorite tracks:

Like O, Like HCall It OffDark Come SoonFloorplanBack In Your HeadRelief Next to Me

The Con (the song) is good, but it needs to be re-recorded... especially the first part. Where it should be snappy, it's a pile of mush.

Like O, Like H is probably a masterpiece. It was the first song on the album that genuinely gave me chills. Also, if someone could tell me what the crap it means, that would be great.

It's pretty amusing that they placed the more challenging and sketchy songs right at the beginning of the album, while the last four or five songs are sharp and accessible.

And who knew they'd make a song about gay marriage and homophobia? ("I Was Married")

Tegan & Sara ready to face the futureTheir new CD has the usual musings on love, but the music is truly complex.Source: Los Angeles Times

Canadian twin sisters Tegan and Sara Quin make sticky, controlled pop that radiates fragile emotions, such as the worries signaling the end of a relationship or the awkward fears that can sometimes thwart our best intentions. On their fourth album, 2004's "So Jealous," the Quins, 26, shellacked the high-anxiety-meets-New Wave formula, garnering a cover by the White Stripes ("Walking With a Ghost") and a Juno Award nomination alongside Broken Social Scene and the New Pornographers.

For their new album, "The Con," Tegan tried to break old habits, even those good ones that kept them touring for 18 months.

"I'm a bit of a past addict," the older twin said from a Vancouver club, where the sisters and their three-piece band were about to perform, all sporting their trademark asymmetrical haircuts. "I usually write about old relationships. For the first time, I said, 'Forget that, write something new.' "

After ending a five-year romance 1 1/2 years ago, Tegan, who lives in Vancouver, went through "a second teenage run. I was partying, drinking, flying around and DJing parties." But she was also writing songs about her emotional state, trying to look inward. She swapped demos with Sara, who was recording her own songs in a humid closet in her Montreal apartment.

When Tegan and Sara started to record "The Con" in January with producer Chris Walla (Death Cab for Cutie), Tegan stopped drinking, started running and stayed out of love.

"It's my social science experiment," she laughed. "I haven't had a drink for seven months.... It feels so clear to not be indulging in anything that's intoxicating me, be it love or obsessive thought or alcohol."

For all of Tegan's efforts, "The Con" still sounds obsessive, like a good book that envelops you in its world. The difference is that the tensions about love and identity are matched by their most complex musical landscape yet. "The Con," built from many of the original demos, is knotty pop, gorgeous and sometimes alien with abandoned-arcade synth pulses and tremulous slabs, plus tonal harmonies that are so close, they almost collapse.

"The Con" is about contradictions, familiar territory for Tegan and Sara. Both are extreme introverts who have to summon courage to make a phone call, Tegan said, but it's not evident in the sisters' animated live shows. In conversation, Tegan happily chatters away.

Perhaps good counsel helps them cope. Unlike many bands, Tegan and Sara have been properly nurtured. Their first album, recorded when they were 18, caught the attention of Vapor Records, Neil Young's label. Mentored by the great flannelled one himself, as well as label president and Young's longtime manager Elliot Roberts, the twins have grown up in a family of Canadian musical royalty. Young doesn't give too much feedback, Tegan said, except: "Don't worry about what Canada or America wants. Just keep making music the way you want to."

But Young's approach has rubbed off, resulting in a mature work ethic and an unshakeable sense of purpose.

"It's not our intention to blow up and be a huge band," Tegan said. "We're in a place in our career and our lives where we think it's important to take time off between records so we don't burn out.

"Looking back on 'So Jealous,' we were ready for that attention. This record is no different. We're ready for the next level and so it will happen."

In the meantime, the twins maintain their stylish shags with a fierce dedication.

"It's kind of an obsession," Tegan admitted, describing the band's latest cut with long bangs and shaved sides as the "flop-hawk."

"We refuse to let just anyone touch our hair. It becomes this thing: How do we route our tour so we can get back for a haircut?"

all the bump of this thread did was made me miss daniel robert epstein

“The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts” – Friedrich Nietzsche